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Everyone thinks they do 20 percent. But if you looked at their calendar, it's like eight percent.

Right? They're really the only way you can recruit.

I'll tell you the one the one simple KPI, which is you have to do six interviews a week.

I am Robin shows you at Higher Suites and we are sourcing automation software that helps of the tech companies. Hire the best guys at me and follow me now only. Do you want to keep an eye on this call.

So today we're welcoming Jason Lemkin, if you don't know him already. Jason told Oecussi in the company called Ecocide to Adobe for 400 million dollars a few years ago is now running. Suster is very famous here, but maybe. Jason, can you tell us more about Suster exactly what it is? Sure.

Suster started off as a blog back in 2012 and some core answers about all the mistakes I made as a sasebo getting to that first million a month, that first 10, 10 million a year or so. And now it's somehow grown to be the largest community in the world for and cloud entrepreneurs and founders.

Yeah, and what I like about Suster as well is so you have these events, you have a lot of podcasts, a lot of content, and you like to write a lot about hiring and selling teams of salespeople. And I think they'll probably be the the main topics we will address today or some generic advice that you want to start with. I think yeah, I think them for for hiring a VP of sales, I think more than anything else, we could talk about a lot of things.

And the reason I talk so much about it, I did it early because not a lot of folks had really explore this. There was a lot of content on product and engineering, but not a lot on this critical hire, but also because as I as I kind of came out of my fogger finding my own startup and worked with a few dozen other startups, I learned that about 75 percent of the startups hired the wrong first VP of sales, just like I did.

And you end up losing a year. So the most important thing actually is probably not hiring GMs or Mr. Perfect, although we can chat about that. The most important thing is not screwing it up because you can't lose a year just when it gets good, because we tend to hire that VPs. I'll just add a million, two million and there are a little less. A little more just when those everything's starting to to work and come together and then boom, you hire the wrong person on all the wheels fall off.

So we can chebaa about that. But I'll tell you, if I had to distill all the things we've talked about, all the folks we've interviewed, everything I've written and learn, it would be really one thing to understand that a VP sales half her or his job is hiring. It's hiring, so it's not enough if they were the top eight, your sales exec at a hot startup, it's not enough if they are a manager but did not hire anyone great before, no matter what you do, no matter how great their LinkedIn, no matter what cool company they worked at before, if they haven't hired at least a couple, at least two or three great reps that hit and exceeded quota, they're not your VP of sales, not even a stretch for yourself.

So if nothing else, find out who they hired that that did well. And go talk to those two days, see if it's true, see if they really recruited those people and see if anyone will join her at your company. And if you hear that you've you're on to something, you might you might actually have your right candidate. But so many folks ignore that they don't do that extra step. They don't see they don't see if they've really proven they can recruit even a tiny, successful team and then it just all falls apart.

Yeah. So they say players are a players, so that's basically looking for people they already hired.

And it's not even that for VP of sales. The real risk is in a players hired No one. This is the risk. What happens is Robin, his folks get excited like like things are going great. And you've got two A's, right. You that you hired yourself and you're a million, two million. The leads are finally coming in. You've got it right into your product has issues and gaps and you're like, I'm going to go hire Bob from wherever.

And Bob's charismatic. He can spell and araa. But Bob himself has never recruited any great reps.

And then boom. Right. It's not just that A's higher A's, which is true. It's that Bob's never hired a sales rep himself and he doesn't know how to do it. He doesn't know where to source them and he doesn't know how to get them. And the clock's ticking. And what is Bob do? He hires A, B or C? Not because Bob might not be in AA someday as a VP of sales, but because in a individual contributor doesn't know how to hire great sales reps.

Right. And you just hit a wall and they hire worse and worse people. The, quote, attainment goes down and you see this downward spiral from someone that hasn't hired good folks before. So that's that's the chicken in the egg in VP sales hiring. But you you can sacrifice for for rough around the edges. You can sacrifice for didn't work at that hot startup. You can sacrifice for industry, maybe even deal size, but they have to have hired a couple reps that did well.

OK, and what's your advice for the person who's a VP of sales today but doesn't know how to hire people? What's your advice for them? For them quit.

You're not a VP of sales. You've made a tragic error. And what you should do is either go back and an and learn or go for. What you should do is quit and find a real VP of sales, go be a director of sales under her and learn. You need to you need those two years of hiring experience to be able to VP sales. You jump too quickly and you will fail. So it's better to raise your hand and say, hey, I overstretched, I'm going to I'm going to carry a bag here.

I'm going to be an individual contributor or go work for a VP of sales that knows how to do it and she'll teach you everything.

OK, and what I like also is that you mention the different type of cells according to the size of the company. So we talked about the evangelised, the Mister make it repeatable, Mr. Gudbjerg, et cetera, et cetera. Can you tell us more about the different types of players for different types of companies?

Yeah, that's a fun post on GMs dashboards. Mr. Go Big. You can see that one on Suster. It's one of our it's right on the homepage. It's Astrachan, which is one of the most popular ones, even though it's it's years ago.

I think we can talk about that. But but let's let's simplify it again, because we're on audio here. I think the most important thing is you could only reach forward a stage so you don't want to hire. Let's say you're at five million ARAA for the sake of discussion. You don't want to hire someone that's never even experienced that. That's too risky. You don't wanna hire someone that's that's never gotten past him. Spin it. But it's a company that's gotten past one or two million if you're at five.

Right. They just don't know the playbook. Right. They can't know the playbook because they haven't lived it. Right. Just like if you like we talked about before, if you've never hired a great idea, you can't possibly know the playbook to hire them. You think you do because you worked in a team, but you don't know the playbook. So you can you can use one stage forwards playbook. So if you're at five million ARAA, look, you're not going to be at five million next year, right?

I sure hope not. So you could hire someone that has never worked anywhere last and say fifteen million. Ten million araa write. That playbook is a little rough around the edges for five but it's ok, but once it's two stages, once you're at five million you hire someone that's never been anywhere below 30 or 40 or 50 million error.

They just don't have the right playbook. It's a way too expensive playbook. It it assumes the brand is much more developed. It assumes the infrastructure is much more developed. It assumes they can hire twenty people to start. And that playbook, you just crater with the playbook. So it's got to be someone that at least has experience at where you're going to be next year.

OK, and you also like to say that there is. Difference between bus direction, post product market fit and pre product market seats in the market seats, the CEO needs to spend 20 percent of their time recruiting always from day to day one million.

And OK, so it's always even remember about maybe about two and a half years ago, three years ago, I was in downtown Redwood City where one of Box's headquarters is, and outside of five guys burgers. Aaron Levy was their CEO box with one of his co-founders. And I said, hey, Aaron, how you doing? It's always nice to he'll say hi to me. And I said, What's going on? He had a nice chat with my son.

He's like, I'm like, what do you need? Anything I can do to help, you know, like put you on stage or from a box is like, do you know any great VPs of engineering?

So he said, five hundred million. There are back then still spending all of his time recruiting, just like when we first met. Right. It never goes away. It's just who you recruit changes. So it's always 20 percent, which is important. Let me let me let me dive in on that in sales with some point and then come back to your question or ask the version you want. The one of the biggest mistakes that founders make with sales is they they they either hire a couple days or they hire the VP of sales and they say, I don't want to be in sales anymore.

Right. I'm tired. I don't like sales. I was spending for good at recruiting. I was spending 20, 30 percent of my time in sales and now I'm going to get back to product or the things I love. You never get that 20 percent back time and recruiting and you never get that 20 percent time minimum that you have to spend with customers and prospects. You're going to have to do that for for your entire career.

And so what is it exactly? It's about sourcing, same as everyone, and asking people around him using recruiting, is it?

Yeah. This well, obviously it changes right. Later you'll have in-house recruiters and a team and later you'll you'll have VPs and SVP and EVP and they will be sourcing candidates and your job will become a closer right. Help close them. Right. You and then your job at the top will be only you know as you get bigger if you're Aerin or whomever, your job mainly is to recruit your senior team. Right. Which it always is for any executive, whether you're a VP, sales director or SVP, CEO, ultimately, like when it's tiny, when you're tiny, you have to prove to everybody, right.

If you're the CEO, you have to recruit the office manager. If you have an office anymore after covid, you have to recruit everybody. But once you have 20, 30, 40 people, once you have any layer of management, the managers job should be to hire the people to report to them. Right. That's why the VP of Sales fails if they have no experience. And your job is to constantly be hiring management. But how long is your average VP going to last?

Two to three years, right. Four years. And you're going to have to hire a new one and then you're going to need a GM of a and then you're going to need this layer in these people. So you'll always be spending your time, which is usually focused on that that one layer below you.

And how do you how do Fondas, CEOs convince the performers to join their team when they're young and when they confide with a big take, for instance, any advice on that about close how to founders do it or how do VPs that work for them do it?

How do the founders do it? Maybe both. I mean, this is. Look, the reality is in the early stages. There's just a couple of thoughts, first of all, bear in mind, there are startup people out there. They are people like you and me. There are people who that's where we're happy. We're happy in this small environment. We're OK. We'll trade off the fact there's no great onboarding or training for the fact that we can run startup people, our folks that want to run, they want to run.

They don't want to have obstacles put in their way. And they want to do at least in some area, they want to do great things and they get that. That means they may have no one doing code review they get. That may mean no one. There's no one in sales. OP said that they have to they have to follow up on the accounting themselves if they're in sales or whatever function they get that. But they want to be those people.

So first of all, you're not going to recruit non startup people in the early days anyway, right? Unless you have a raise two hundred million and you're in your series, your receipt around. So just bear that in mind. You need startup people in their heart and soul want to do it. How do you recruit them? I think. I think it's interesting. So let's step back, let me talk about the mistake founders make. I see again and again is that they think they're like any as long as they can talk to someone, they can close them.

They think, I'm so charismatic, I'm so driven that all I have to do is get in the room with Robin and I can convince him or her to join my company.

But there's too many startups today, right? There's there's a thousand companies, startups born every month. There's hundreds in every Wisse batch today. So it's not enough to get in the room with a candidate. But there are more and more startup people. There are. And I think the most important thing. So what can you do? I think the most important thing you can do is to make your startup hot in some way. It helps. It's not everything.

But PR is always important for recruiting. Why do why do half of the public company CEOs come on stage disaster events? Why do you think they're on stage? Why do you think that in many cases they fly out to some disaster annual? Do you think it's because sitting and sitting up on stage is like so great once you've done it one hundred eighty times, do you think it's to get customers?

It's not even to get customers. If you're Mongo DB or or slack, why is Stewart Butterfield come to SAS or three times. It's to get customers for slack. No. Everyone use the slack. Right. It's for recruiting, it's for recruiting partners. It's for recruiting allies and it's recruiting employees. And I can't tell you on our podcast, our podcast gets about a hundred thirty thousand downloads a month. I can't tell you how many folks say that that is a CEO being on that podcast.

How to help them find a great candidate. So do PR get on TechCrunch and it doesn't have to be perfect because it's just one candidate. Right? Make your blog awesome beyond a secondary or tertiary or do any podcast in the world that you can just get the word out that you might be hot. And then the beauty startup people, they'll take a risk. They'll take a risk that you only have ten customers. They'll take a risk that you are pre product market fit.

If they they feel that you could be hot because that's what a startup people want to do. Right. We want to be part of a rocket ship and we're OK that if we're early stage folks, we're OK, that it's not a rocket ship yet. As long as we see signs it could be. And even micropower is so important there.

What is micro PR?

It's things that like not a million people are going to going to see, but it's OK if ten people see it. It's OK if you do a PR to to a niche in your in your industry. OK, and only ten prospects see it, but one of them becomes a customer. Wasn't it worth it. Of course, it was like and it's true for employees to employees are so expensive and so important, right? So, yes, everyone wants to be on the number one number one, event number one blog, number one podcast, TV and everything.

But like, you don't need a million great employees to see your PR. You need that one person that you want to hire to say, wow, that that's a start up. I want to join.

And do you use the contents to close people? So that means you'll reach out to them and showcase the content, or do you use that to generate inbound and people coming to you?

I think it does all of those things, but I think that just like any type of lead generation, whether it's humanly generation or customer lead generation, you have to see content more as air cover. Otherwise, you will expect too much of it. If you expect that webinar to generate a million dollars of revenue, it might not. If you expect that podcast, that that promotion, that blog post. It may well do that. And that's great.

But Google is your ally, right? If someone finds something through SEO, through search, if they if it reinforces, like, you know, what is. How cool is higher. Sweet. Like, is this a company you'd like to join and then boom. I see, I see a second touch. Right. That reinforces this potential decision to buy or join. So think of you have to start. I know one, especially when we're early.

We want everything to be demanding. And Leegin and I've written a lot about that. But as you scale, you're going to find that air cover is just important because people need multiple touches to decide if they want to take risk, risk with a vendor and risk in a hiring decision risk as well.

OK, OK, so this is basically doing as much noise as possible and getting your company out there and then it's not stupid noise.

It needs to be micro PR.

You need to know where your employees or customers are. It's better to do a podcast that only has one hundred downloads. If they're your customers then to do one that has great reach, that has no value. Right. Micropower isn't isn't spray and pray. It's not be everywhere. It's beware matters. Be present. It's be present as much as you can, given that no one's ever heard of you.

And if we get back to building teams of sales, any specific podcasts you'd recommend, any specific blog or places where there are a few people. But exactly in this target. You mean to find a VP of sales or find you today, you're hiring a V.P. of sales or even hiring A is the best way to find a VP of sales for most folks today?

It's not. It's one of the things that's happened over the last couple of years is that there are more communities of VPs, of sales. And there were when I started writing faster, there are more true communities like like online communities and there's more informal communities. And so the my best advice in general is meet as many VPs of sales as you possibly can. It doesn't matter if you're going to recruit them. Right. First of all, you have to learn to if you haven't hired a VP of anything before, you need the archetype.

Right. You need to you need the bar. So you need to meet four or five and fall in love with the candidate. It doesn't matter if you can hire her to say, look, is the best of all the I've never hired a VP of sales before. Now I've met five. But boy, Debra was better than all the rest. Right? So now you know, look, Debra is not going to join me. She's pretty happy at wherever at whatever hot startup but you path.

But at least I know at least I know when I meet Bob or James or Evelin, she has to be as good or better than Deborah, at least adjusted for her experience, or I'm not going to make the hire. So meet as many of these as many candidates for the role and just and then see if you can make one or two an advisor, give them a few shares. You'll be surprised if you are if if your mission is compelling that folks that are better than you think will be advisers.

Not everyone. I'm too busy. Don't ask me to be your adviser. I can't do it. I'm overloaded.

But I'll tell you, when I started Sastry, when I started investing, I had been with and I was an advisor to a whole bunch of great companies from together, which are worth billions today. So people have time then they don't have time. So find those advisors and mentors in this case in sales and then ask all of them, be tenacious, say, hey, do you know anyone that could be great for my startup? And if that VP of Sales believes in you, whether or not you can hire her, they will find you.

Other candidates, they the great ones know each other. OK, so you start by doing PR and micro PR, then you start to meet with people, talk to them, meet with every great VP you can ever in any functional area, take all the meetings, ask your advisers, ask your mentors, ask your angels, ask everyone.

Can you introduce me to a great VP? People don't do enough of this, don't do enough. It doesn't matter if you can hire him or her, you have to find the bar. You have to find the archetype. The lines know who. Someone's great, right? You need all the great VPs. And if you haven't hired one before, you don't know what a great one is, do you? Yeah, so you'll hire a bad one because you don't know what a great one is, you'll hire someone that smiles great and dresses well and talks the talk and is very poised and worked at Dropbox.

And that's all great. But that might it's probably not the right thing for your company.

OK, and then how would you build out into the hiring process itself, the assessment, how would you know that? You know what a great deal looks like? How would you assess them during the interview?

Well, look, I mean, here's the thing. Event at someday you'll know, right? Someday you'll you'll you'll have you'll be done more than certainly I have. And you'll know. You'll know. You'll know. You'll actually know for almost every role after about 10 million er because you've made every mistake three or four times by the time you get to but you won't know until then. And so what's the answer. You know it's funny, I remember in the early days I, you know, I haven't been able to write code in a long time.

And you say how do you know if you've hired a great CTO? Right. How do you know? How do you know? Well, it's actually pretty easy. Once you once you once you know, you know, but until then, you just find the smartest person in the world in a functional area and you just ask their opinion.

So look, a VP, a sales job is in sales, isn't it? They can probably snow you a bit if you haven't done before. So they can probably convince you they're wonderful. And and many mediocre VPs of sales are quite charming. They're quite they're quite poised. But find one great either VP of Sales or the beauty to VP sells us. Just find a CEO that you know, that's that's done it before. Right. And ask that CEO a 10 million or 15 million or 20 million.

Could you do me one favor? Could you do me one favor? Can you can you can you interview Eilleen for me? And if he says, wow, she's she's one of the best up and coming sales leaders I've talked to in a while, hire her. Just hire her. This is the magic thing. Right. And and, you know, I'm working with the startup right now. They're just crossing 10 million.

They're on fire, but they've never hired a real VP of marketing slash CMO type. And I've been making a lot of intros to the CEO because he's very he's he's great. He's a he's a he's an absorber of information. Again, they're coming up on ten million. They're growing 20 percent a month like it's insane. And I just and then I made about ten intros. And then the other day I introduced him to a CEO of a company that exited for about five hundred dollars million that I love the CEO.

And he's like, this is the best. This this was the best intro you made, like talking to the other VP of marketing sales rep, talking to the CEO who has hired so many and made so many mistakes. He's like now I now I know now I know what I need. So so get that.

Get a get a VP of Sales to interview the VP of sales for you or at least get a CEO that's done that next stage they'll they'll know and they will see the things you're missing because you'll get desperate, you'll get tired and you won't and you will want to gloss over things that are going to lead to mediocre outcomes. That's the problem. Might we gloss over like, oh, wow, he was so great. He worked at Twilio and Tullio is awesome, but truly owes it to something.

Billionaire Jeff Lawson's really one of my favorite founders.

But Tullio today is not a startup.

But you might fall in love with him because the brand, the way they talk, the fact that you love to go, I mean, you could fall in love with this and talk yourself into a higher that is not not appropriate for your startup.

So but but this other VP sales or the CEO that's done your stage, they'll they'll they'll know.

And what do you say to is that any way if you're VP of sales isn't going to work out, then you'll know one sales cycle.

One sales cycle. And what do you do then? Well, you need to make plans. It's not going to work, you'll know the truth is, you'll know in 30 days if you really listen and watch, but you'll certainly know when a sale cycle, because the thing is and when I wrote this iconic post years ago, like if you're VP of sales, you'll know if they work out in one sales cycle and everyone else I know got mad, they're like, no, we need more time.

But that's just your jerk, Jason. And then and then a little later, later, they're like, you know, you're right. Of course you're right. And y y I when I wrote that, I didn't say that your VP sales has to quintuple your sales in one sales cycle. Right.

They don't have to they don't have to change radically change things, but they have to tilt the curve because if a VP sales can't bring in one good idea to sell better if a VP sales can't create more urgency if a VP sales can't drive up the deal size. Right. If the VP of sales isn't a better closer than you are as a CEO, I mean, what do you know about closing? We're good meddlers as CEOs. If they can't do anything in a sales cycle, just what the leads that are already in flight.

Right. If they just can't bring them in faster, they don't even have to do anything else but bring them in faster. They'll they'll never do it. They'll just never do it. So it's time will not cure this problem. So you have to decide, should I fire this person today? You're you're definitely better off without her if there's no positive, positive improvement.

But what most of us do is we stick with this person for longer because we don't want to do. And then things just get worse because they hire there. They don't make it. They're not succeed in the sales cycle. So to start bringing in more and more mediocre people and they bring your batting average down.

The converse is I just wrote this post on Suster recently, I wrote that that one about one sale cycle years ago. I just wrote one very recently where I laid out the math in a Google sheet about what actually what's.

So that's a mistake many of you can make. You're going to want to give them more time when there's no improvement, nothing proven, doesn't have to be vast, but there has to be improvement in one sale cycle.

Then the interesting question is if what if you see improvement?

But it's not magic, right?

What if you were growing at one hundred percent year over year before, you know, you know, you could do much more and you're doing one twenty five when you hire the VP of sales.

Right. That's, that's, that's better isn't it. And fast compound. So one twenty five is a lot better than one hundred. But it's not epic is it. What do you do with that. Higher. And what I've learned over the years watching several dozen South start ups now is many, many CEOs actually you should fire the person that that doesn't do anything in the sales cycle because they're going to bring your batting average down to one that does better, but not what it could be.

It actually turns out it's super risky to not continue to back her. It's super risky because you're going to find someone better next week. How long is it going to take our things? Is it really is this is a tough hire. So I think I've as counter-intuitive as this, I think I've defaulted as if after a sale cycle, things are better with their VP sales. You've got to try to backfill her and back them as long as you can, even if you know someone else in theory could do better.

They've inflected the curve and you have to you have to ride that bet out. OK, OK, interesting, so you'll know after one sale cycle, if the person doesn't work out but you don't know if you know, you'll know you'll they'll be in one of three buckets after one sale cycle.

Either nothing will get better, in which case it never will. It just never will. Or you'll see jaw dropping improvement. Right. That's at the other end. You're like, whoa. Right. I mean, oh, my God. Like, oh, we did have all these leads. It's just no one was following up. And it's like magic happens. Right? But then there's a third category which is mediocre like that. Better, but not great.

Right.

And that one counterintuitively, I think you need to stick with it until you're sure you have a better resource and plan, because doing better than before with compounding revenue and sales are so important.

It may not be the same conclusion for engineering, for example, but it is in sales because just doing better than before is still a big plus for VP of Sales doing better than before. Most don't. Most do worse than before you hired them. OK, OK, also, we are getting near the end of the Plotka, so two quick questions now. What's the best advice that you wish you you had been given as a startup founder?

Wow.

The number one bit of advice about hiring sales and building sales team. I think the best. Well, I guess I guess the advice is don't there's no magician. There's no magician you you have to find you have to get two or more a sales reps hitting quota doing well, and then you bring in someone to help you do better. And that's what my true VP sales did. But the first one I hired, I was expecting a magician. Everyone expects the magician, sales, sales, professional sales.

VP of sales are not magicians.

They're they're incredible. They're incredible scholars of the process and science of sales.

But they can't create product market fit. Right. They can build on it. So there are no do not expect a sales magician to bail you out of a tough situation. As a CEO, you have to bail yourself out of a tough sales situation. Then when it's half decent, at least half decent, then you're ready for the VP sales. So that's obvious now. But I don't think any of us really appreciated it way back once.

And that's also the thing that you have to experience for yourself, I guess. And what's the so you say that CEOs may spend 20 percent of their time hiring. What's the part that you hate the most about hiring?

Well, boy, I think any deep down, anyone that says they love recruiting is sort of line you have to.

That's why you need a quota, right?

You need to because maybe the most important thing I'll answer your question, but maybe the most important thing I'll tell you on the 20 percent is everybody lies. Everyone thinks they do 20 percent. But if you looked at their calendar, it's like eight percent. Right. They're really the only way you can recruit. I'll tell you the one the one simple KPI, which is you have to do six interviews a week. You know why sex is so important?

Because it's more than one a day. If you say 20 people say they do 20 percent of time recruiting, then you look at the talent, you know how many interviews they did this week? Two or three. It's not enough, is it? It's not really 20 percent, is it? But if you force yourself to report each week, how many interviews did I do? And if it's less than six, you get an F. That will add up to 20 percent, even if those interviews are 20 minutes long.

Trust me, with the Parap, the review. Right. The outreach. But you have to have a KPI on these things. And six interviews has to be the minimum, the minimum per per per week.

And you'll find that for four CEOs, it can be hard to spend half your time, but you'll find the best VPs of sales and VP of engineering generally spend half their time recruiting. And that's a lot more than six meetings, isn't it? It's often 20. It's often 20 a week that VPs of sales and VPs of engineering will do and rapidly scaling companies is twenty 20 interviews a week. But if it's not six, it ain't going to be, it ain't going to be the 20 percent.

And what's the part that I like the least?

You know, I mean, it's the same I think the part I like the least for interviewing is it's the same part. I like the least investing. It's like meeting with any potential candidate that we wouldn't hire. So figuring out a way to have a wide enough funnel to capture everyone to capture a very diverse and exciting pool of candidates, but every every interview you take where there's a zero percent chance you're going to hire them, zero percent, it's just that's those are mental cycles, creative cycles.

You never get back. So those are the ones I constantly struggle both for for interviewing and for investing that I try to find a way to avoid is the zero percent. OK, collect the last part about the targets. Think about it, you got to do it or else you're else. It's not 20 percent. Really compounds, that's 300 per year, get it? OK, cool, thanks a lot, Jason was it was great. A lot of a very actionable feedback.

Thanks a lot.

And, you know, this was terrific. And I guess the last word I'll just do is that that employee for recruiting, that employee is out there. Don't give up. I know a lot of us feel like we'll never find that VP of Marketing to that VP of sales.

Just hire someone great, a great engineer. If you know you need a VP of sales, but you can't find her, hire a VP of marketing. Right. Just keep hiring someone great because every great hire is accretive in SAS and recurring revenue. And as terrible as it takes, if it takes you a year to find your VP of sales, well, you're doing this for 10 or 20 years, right? This is SAS. This is Cloud.

So beat yourself up, but don't give up because you will you will find that VP. It just may take you six to 12 months more than you'd hope, but don't give up.

Okay. Thanks a lot for the last words. Jason, thanks. Thanks for having me.

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That really, really helps. Thanks a lot and talk to you soon.